Sanguine - Aro Volturi

Chapter thirty one

Watching Caius loose his temper was a delicate mixture of comical, disturbing and terrifying all at the same time. For a man who rarely changed his facial expression, and could maintain conversation without so much as a twitch of his lips. The way his eyebrows knitted together, the corners of his mouth moved impossibly further down and his nose scrunched with anger was impressive.

"Aro, if you could control your woman," he growls while fixing me with a furious stare.

"Caius, Celestine has a name, please," Aro sighs.

"And Aro doesn't control me, more importantly," I add giving Aro the side eye. "I was simply taking advantage of all three of you being in the same room...I would like to visit the women who you've...who are with Alec and Demetri, I think it will benefit them to have company, human company, I can imagine being locked away and it's not pleasant, but I can't begin to image how awful being r-" I caught myself before I said the word but Marcus shifted in his chair making me assume he knew what I was originally planning to say. "Socialising is good for their mental health." I add as neither of them speak.

"I don't wish for you to get attached," Aro says with a frown.

"I won't, it'll be purely professional, but I need to help them," I say sternly. I wasn't going to drop this subject without a proper fight, it was the least I could do.

Marcus spoke next. "I think it's a good idea," he says matter-of-factly.

I smiled at him, and he cracked a smile in return. Marcus had been rather quiet of late, and far more stone-faced than usual which made me a little sad. I was still partly in the shadows of what was happening with Didyme, I knew she was feeling somewhat better, but not in good enough spirits to see me, or convince Aro that it was safe for us to be in the same room together. Dora had been a ghost too, but her bitterness was driven from the immunity I had by being with Aro, this 'over-protection' as I had named it was partly because I was all new and shiny and quite largely because I was human. Aro thought a change in wind direction might hurt me. I hoped that things would soon straighten themselves out and we could be friends again, I was living with quite a restrictive number of people to talk to at the moment. And I knew it probably wouldn't be too long before Demetri and I offended Aro with our casualness again.

"It must be very hard, being isolated with only the limited company of the individual members of our guard. I fully support Celestine's idea, and would in fact, take it one further and say the women should be allowed to spend their free days in each other's company."

"Marcus, this is absurd!" Caius spits. "It is sure to encourage plotting," he says angrily.

"Yes, plotting to escape from a castle teeming with vampires, I'm sure they'll succeed," I reply sarcastically and Caius hisses venomously.

"Aro," he snaps trying to get a reaction from my mate. Aro's hand had moved to rest against my shoulder in a way that I think was more for his own comfort, I raised my hand to squeeze his fingers.

"I trust you mia amore," he says and catches my eye with warmth in his red gaze, before casting his eyes to Caius with a slightly less pleasing glare. "You appear out voted, dear brother," Aro says almost smugly.

Caius grumbles something inaudible to me under his breath. "Would you mind if I steal you away for a small walk, Celestine?" Marcus asks. "We can leave these two to argue out their concerns without us."

I was taken slightly aback but found myself nodding, "Of course," I smile and stand, feeling Aro's hand slip from my shoulder and lightly grasp my hand. "I'll meet you back at my kitchen," I give him a smile and squeeze his hand reassuringly.